For each customer, at the head of these efforts is the CIO. She or he is the person leading the way and I can say that the CIOs that I have been fortunate enough to work with are clear thinkers and they get it. They are aware of what they need to do, and when they are not they work to educate themselves and are quick to build a strategy.

When they know what to do, the question then becomes getting there.

The "how," for lack of a better term. And it's this "how" which is where it gets tricky and it's also where IBM has always come in to assist.

We have a unique relationship with the CIOs of the world. One where we work in a close partnership to assist them in...I hate to sound lofty about this, but it's true...changing the world.

Back to the tricky part. With so many new innovations happening at IBM (we continue to lead the industry in patents year-to-year) it's important to continue the dialogue with our customers so that they know about all we have to offer them.

This two-way conversation with our customers is essential to their success and it is why we do things like the IBM CIO Conference.

On October 17th, an invitation-only list of customers will join IBM for a meeting in Dubai to hear about "a decade of smart." and one of the items on the agenda is, "From virtualization to cloud computing with integrated service management."

If your CIO is attending, you might want to ask them to sit in on this session.

If she or he is not attending, you do have some options.

You can contact your IBM sales rep and/or Business Partner (Business Partner Locator Site) and have them sit down with you now to discuss Integrated Service Management and be sure to ask them about conducting a whiteboarding session.

Also, and in addition to that, you can register for Pulse 2011, the premiere service management event.

And, as always, you can leave comments on this blog.

*today's title is a play on the Paul Thomas Anderson film "There Will Be Blood" and yes I do get bonus points for the number of movie references I work into my blogs.

I’m a big fan of IBM’s mission of Smarter Planet. As
an IBMer based out of Bangalore, India, I get inspired by Big Blue’s rich history
and the impact it has been creating on the world’s business systems.

This week, India is celebrating the “Joy of Giving
Week” (JGW), a pan-India initiative started in 2009 to celebrate a “festival of
giving” to the needy and to our society, through various forms of giving: time,
skills, resources, money etc. JGW is held annually for a week, starting on a
Sunday and ending on a Saturday. These dates also contain Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on the 2nd of October.

Donation boxes are kept in IBM offices across all
the locations. Interestingly, as I was making a list of things to be donated to
bring in smiles into a few innocent faces, a thought occurred to me….. and then
my joy knew no bounds. I realized that to be associated with IBM, which works
towards giving back to our Earth with a mission of making it a Smarter Planet
through innovations in products and services, is a joy in itself. A joy of
giving to the world we live in, for our smart and sustainable living.

Further, I love my job which is working on our Tivoli Success Stories for our IBM Client References.Many of
these stories talk about the work that we are doing with our customers and
their implementation of Smarter Planet solutions.Our customers, using these solutions, are
having a significant impact on making our lives better and more fulfilling. And, YES.....I can see the ‘Joy of Giving’ being passed on from IBM to our clients and
to the world :)

If there is one webcast about service management that you listen to this year...well, I guess the first question I'd ask is why you're limiting yourself to one...but if there was just one, this would be it.

We love our planet, Mother
Earth. Don’t we? As for me, having been born and brought up in a place so close
to nature, away from bustle of city, and having studied ‘Environment and
Resource Economics’ as one of the subjects in my Post Grad, these things have
always been the driving forces behind my love and fascination towards Mother
Earth. And, since Mother Earth is inseparable from the technological revolution
and innovations happening around us, it gives me a proud feeling to be an IBMer
who works towards Big Blue’s mission of a Smarter Planet.

Visibility, Control and Automation™ is how
IBM defines service management which, when obtained for the smarter business infrastructures and end-to-end service
chain, can take any business to its zenith and contribute in making our
Mother Earth a Smarter Planet.

IBM’s Tivoli® Software places
IBM in a unique position to help the clients provide smarter solutions and the
expertise needed to design, build and manage a infrastructure that enables them
to improve service, reduce cost and manage risk.

Not long ago, while surfing
through our case study database, I stumbled upon a Tivoli success story that
caught my attention and I’m happy to share the same with our readers here.“Schweizerische
Bundesbahnen (SBB) Leverages rail system and network transparency to keep
trains on schedule”. Wow, the title looked so fascinating to me and that might
be because I’ve had many not-so-good-train-experiences, delay in arrival or
departure and the likes (which I always dislike).

Schweizerische Bundesbahnen
(SBB), or Swiss Federal Railways, is Switzerland’s leading transportation
company.SBB transports over 800,000
passengers and more than 220,000 tons of cargo each day, maintains 3,011
kilometers of track that connects more than 800 rail stations and also a large
construction organization that engages in roughly 5,000 construction programs
each year. However, due to inefficient monitoring systems, a one day system
problem in 2005 had stranded nearly 200,000 passengers, costing almost US$5
million. Hence, SBB was looking for a more aggressive service management
strategy to prevent future events of this type and operate 9000 trains a day
without any hassles.

1.Delivers
customizable user interfaces that increase network transparency, and helps
support staff to be better informed about infrastructure health.2.Leverages proactive management and automated
alert systems to recognize and repair more than 50 percent of issues before
they can impact operations.3.Increases the availability of SBB’s train
network by approximately 2,000 minutes per month - therefore saving
approximately US$2.3 million each year.

Martin Schaeren, Head of BU
Service Management, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), is all praise for IBM, “Trying to manage 3,000 kilometers of track
is a particularly daunting task. But, by leveraging our new IBM solution, we’re
able to see our entire infrastructure clearly and respond to problems before
they can affect our operations.”

Well, a commendable success
story indeed. We, the IBMers, sincerely, wish that all the railway systems of
our world become ‘smarter’, sooner than later. What say?

The best part is that if you are selected to speak, you get a full conference pass ($1,995 value) not to mention the recognition of your peers (whom you'll be interacting with at the event) as well as a great resume builder.

What do you think? Not a bad way to spend a Friday afternoon!

I speak for everyone on the team when I say that we look forward to what you put together.

PS Obviously, you're not just limited to doing this on Friday. Every day is a good day to work on your abstract :-)

Planet Earth. Big fan. Which is why it's so exciting to be an IBMer right now. Some of the things that we are doing with our Smarter Planet solutions are, for lack of a better word, ground breaking.

IBM has a track record on being right with regard to understanding the needs of our customers and being there with solutions for them.

Smarter Planet is no different. Smarter Planet is responding to the need for living in harmony with the world we live in.

This idea though, is not just an IBM thing. It's a world thing. It's a revolution.

Which is why this Start thing in the United Kingdom is so cool. One my fellow IBMers made me aware of this, and here's what they sent me:

Start is a national initiative by The Prince's Charities to promote and celebrate sustainable living. It aims to demonstrate what a more energy efficient, cleaner and healthier future could look like. During 2010, Start will grow into a vibrant and diverse programme, which will engage people right across the UK.

The IBM Summit is the business to business component of Start and will each day will engage 120 global leaders in business, the public sector and academia to discuss the varying economic, societal and environmental aspects of sustainability. Each of the Summit's nine days has a unique theme including cities, energy, transportation, skills & people, youth, supply chain, finance and analytics. The final day of the vent will combine the work of all days into a discussion on Smarter Business.

IBM is a sponsor and participating in the event, but this is being run by Prince Charles and his organization. Some of the speakers at Start include Sam Palmisano and Ginni Rometty (W00T!*) as well as Stella McCartney and other business people and offiicals from the UK and Europe.

You can follow the event on the official website (startuk.org) or by using some of the links below for the IBM Summit, and you don't have to live in the UK to get value out of these sites or to start a conversation about this in your area.

[*Update: I realized as I was driving home from the comic book store that some folks might not know what the term "W00T" means. It is, according to Wikipedia, "...express happiness or excitement" and has replaced "awesome" in my day-to-day vernacular. In this post, for example, it is in reference to two of our amazing execs speaking at this event. I recommend trying it in conversation.]

For us Americans, 4,000 km of track is about 2,485 miles. Which, as the crow flies*, is roughly the distance from New York city to San Francisco.

The thing that excites me about what KiwiRail is doing is that the management has an analytics portion to it with our Cognos business analytics software.

One of my previous roles at IBM was working on Business Intelligence marketing and I got to know the space pretty well. In talking with so many of our customers, it was the analytics that contributed to their ability to innovate and save time, money and reduce risk.

The combination of GBS services, Maximo software and Cognos for KiwiRail is going to be a huge win for the entire population of New Zealand considering how much of their economy is based on rail transport.

The take away here for our non-rail customers is to look at the Smarter Planet solutions that match your industry.

We cover a lot of ground with KiwiRail and their requirements. If we can do that for them, what can we do for you?

IBM is striving to develop solutions based around your industry and provide things, like Integrated Service Management in this case, to match your business objectives and help you achieve success in your industry.